Former Northampton football coach Frank Tudryn upbeat as he battles cancer

A couple of months apparently has made a big difference in the life of Frank Tudryn.

The former coach of Northampton High School football recently had a weekend visit from current Blue Devils coach Ken O’Brien, who said his friend appears to be responding well to recent cancer treatments.

“His tumor had stopped bleeding with the radiation so he had a lot of energy back and had good color,” O’Brien said of Tudryn. “The one thing I noticed was that he looks as if he’s lost some weight but he was always a weightlifter and the doctors don’t want him to lift anymore.

“But he looked and behaved a lot better than when he was up here,” O’Brien said.

Tudryn, who has been the coach of the Gulf Coast High School Sharks for the past 10 seasons, was diagnosed in March with cancer of the lower esophagus that had spread to his liver. The prognosis wasn’t a good one, doctors giving him nine months maximum.

That ninth month is here and the Naples, Fla., resident’s health is on the upswing with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, as well as the strong support of family, friends and football.

O’Brien, along with another long-time friend in Mike Noonan, spent a recent weekend visiting with Tudryn and his wife Pam, and took in the Sharks’ season finale with Tudryn on the sidelines coaching as if nothing else mattered.

“You never know, a lot of it is so psychological so it will be interesting to see how he handles it now that the football season is over,” O’Brien said. ‘But he has a full teaching load, he’s actually back teaching a lot of history which he hasn’t done down there, he’s basically been a drivers ed. teacher.”

Tudryn was back in his native Northampton in June for a party in his honor at the Look Park Garden House, and returns to New England periodically for consultations at the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston.

O’Brien said Tudryn, a 1965 graduate of Northampton High School with a bachelor’s from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s from American International College, will soon undergo a procedure in which a radioactive chip is inserted in his liver.

Despite all that is happening, the 62-year-old Tudryn is looking ahead, O’Brien said.

“He was talking about he was going to work another five years before he retired,” O’Brien said. “He wasn’t talking like that before. He’s very upbeat and looks a lot better.”